GITEX Ai Türkiye to spotlight national talent drive as Türkiye scales its AI economy

written by Samuel Reed · 5 days ago

Yetkin Aksoy, General Manager of Mobiliz

Ersin Büyükyılmaz, CEO of Treomind

Berat Kjamili, Co-Founder of DotsHub and President of Kodluyoruz

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muhammet Garip, Managing Director of YTÜ Yıldız Technopark

İSTANBUL, TURKEY, August 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A two-day first-of-its-kind event in Istanbul gathers global tech enterprise leaders, technoparks, and academia to fuel the talent ecosystem behind Türkiye’s AI Action Plan
Türkiye’s ambitious initiative to develop AI talent—training 10,000 AI specialists, 100,000 AI application professionals, and five million AI-literate citizens by 2028—will take the spotlight when the country’s most international tech and AI event opens next month in Istanbul.
The country’s AI skills push, part of the 2026–2030 AI Action Plan, ties into a broader multi-billion-dollar national investment strategy aimed at expanding AI across public services and industry. The first-ever GITEX Ai Türkiye convenes global technology companies, engineering institutions, technoparks, academia, government, and investors to accelerate the talent and technology driving the nation’s AI economy.
Running from 9–10 September 2026 at Istanbul Expo Centre, the two-day event will showcase more than 300 exhibiting companies and startups, 150 global speakers, and 100 investors representing US$100 billion in AUM, alongside thousands of international visitors. This gathering connects Türkiye’s growing technology and talent landscape with global expertise, capital, and commercial opportunities.

Global and local expertise converges at GITEX Ai Türkiye
Organisations from around the world and based in Türkiye at GITEX Ai Türkiye will highlight the skills, engineering capabilities, and partnerships needed as AI adoption accelerates.
The Royal Academy of Engineering—the UK’s national academy for engineering and technology—will bring an international perspective on AI talent development and responsible innovation to GITEX Ai Türkiye this September.
Senior Programme Manager Gaëlle Elisha noted that nurturing the next generation of AI talent demands a mix of STEM education, hands-on experience, and lifelong learning, reinforced by stronger collaboration across education, research, and industry.
"Engineers in the AI era will need capabilities that extend beyond technical skills," said Elisha. "Systems thinking, ethics, security, governance and human-centred design will be just as important." The Academy will support 14 engineering innovators at the event and help assemble a delegation from 21 countries spanning Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.
“No single country has all the ingredients — whether that’s research expertise, investment, talent, policy or access to markets. By working together, we can share knowledge, learn from different approaches and help promising technologies scale more quickly and responsibly.”

Industry shapes the next generation of AI skills
Companies participating at GITEX Ai Türkiye will also show how AI is reshaping workforce requirements.
Yetkin Aksoy, General Manager of Mobiliz, a Türkiye-based mobility technology and telematics company, pointed out that AI-powered mobility depends on multidisciplinary teams combining software engineering, data science, product expertise, and industry knowledge. Mobiliz builds this core capability internally through its Arborn initiative.
“Creating more opportunities for young talent on real-world AI projects and driving cross-sector knowledge sharing will be critical to building the skilled workforce for next-generation intelligent mobility and IoT solutions,” Aksoy said.
Ersin Büyükyılmaz, CEO of Treomind, an enterprise infrastructure and digital transformation company, noted: “The greatest skills gap today is not limited to a single AI or cloud technology. Organisations need professionals who can connect data governance, AI infrastructure, hybrid cloud, GPU management, security and business strategy within one operating model.
“At Treomind, we address this through multidisciplinary teams with expertise across AI, data, cloud, cybersecurity and infrastructure. We work closely with organisations to design the right architecture, establish governance and security frameworks, and integrate AI into real business processes.”
Berat Kjamili, Co-Founder of DotsHub—a leading entrepreneurship and open innovation community—Codex Ambassador, President of the technology education organisation Kodluyoruz, and a headline speaker at GITEX Ai Türkiye’s two-day conference programme, identified AI engineering and AI agent deployment as among the most urgent skills needed. Kjamili will explore agentic AI’s impact on enterprise operations during his day-one session, ‘From chatbots to AI workforces — how agentic AI is already rewiring enterprise operations.’
Kodluyoruz has partnered with IBM to upskill 20,000 people in cybersecurity and AI, while earlier collaborations with Microsoft and Harvard University have supported technology education reaching roughly 200,000 people.
“Türkiye has a strong base of entrepreneurial, hardworking young people who want to build their careers and companies here,” Kjamili said. “The potential is clear, but we need to connect this talent with the right skills and opportunities.”

Technoparks accelerate industry-ready AI talent
Türkiye’s innovation base includes 114 technoparks, more than 13,000 technology startups, and over 1,700 R&D and design centres. Technoparks help convert education into practical experience, employment, and entrepreneurship.
Exhibiting at GITEX Ai Türkiye, YTÜ Yıldız Technopark—affiliated with Yıldız Technical University—enables students to work on company challenges, develop prototypes, and turn ideas into business models. Through YTU Startup House, initiatives include a Llama Hackathon organised with Meta and a Microsoft accelerator linking AI startups with corporations.
“Our aim is to nurture a new generation of entrepreneurs and technology professionals who understand AI, can develop it into products, commercialise it, and compete on a global scale,” said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muhammet Garip, General Manager of Yıldız Technology Development Zone.
Fellow exhibitor Medeniyet Technopark—affiliated with Istanbul Medeniyet University—connects AI education with employment through its Teknokampüs programme, which delivers advanced AI and robotics training to students and recent graduates before they present projects directly to companies.
“Talent development should be treated not as a by-product of innovation, but as core innovation infrastructure,” said Ali Ramazan Tak, General Manager of Medeniyet Technopark.

Where Türkiye’s AI ambition takes the global stage
GITEX Ai Türkiye is hosted by the Investment and Finance Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye (Invest in Türkiye) in strategic partnership with the Ministry of Industry and Technology. The flagship debut event is organised by inD—the joint venture between Dubai World Trade Centre and Informa, and global organiser of GITEX, the world’s largest tech, AI and investment network.
The event will place Türkiye’s growing talent base in the spotlight together with the global technologies, expertise, and capital driving AI adoption. International exhibitors include Google Cloud, HPE & NVIDIA, Huawei, ASUS, Dell Technologies, SAP and TrendAI, alongside regional leaders such as e-commerce platform Trendyol, AI and fintech platform Andevos, and state-owned SME banking leader Halkbank.

Gitex Ai Türkiye
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Samuel Reed

Samuel Reed is a senior journalist covering the intersection of business, technology, and society. With over a decade of experience, his work focuses on artificial intelligence, corporate governance, and emerging tech trends.

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